The Prelude to the Mishima Incident explains the process leading up to the November 1970 Mishima Incident, including the relationship between Mishima and the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force that started in 1966, and the founding of the Tatenokai, and the failure of plans to turn the Self-Defense Forces into a national army by taking advantage of the Anpo protests.
This ariticle details that Mishima's statements and actions in the years leading up to the incident, as well as the path of the activities of the Tatenokai organization, along with the historical background of the time. It is said that the essence of the Mishima Incident cannot be grasped without outlining these historical facts, and that examining the processes and factors involved is of great importance.
Buildup 1966 (Shōwa 41) Mishima had been expressing a desire to join the Japan Self-Defense Forces for a trial period since around 1965. And, in the , in June 1966, he published a short story, Voices of the Fallen Heroes, of which the souls of young officers who had executed in the February 26 Incident, and young soldiers who had died as Kamikaze pilots during the Pacific War cursing the Emperor Hirohito for renouncing his own divinity after Japan's defeat in World War II.,
In August, Mishima visited Ōmiwa Shrine in Sakurai-shi, Nara Prefecture, where he practiced being hit by the waterfall for several days, to research Runaway Horses, the second novel in The Sea of Fertility tetralogy, depicts the reincarnation of protagonists who dying at the age of 20, and then visited the in Etajima-shi, Hiroshima Prefecture. He read the suicide notes of the kamikaze pilots at the Education Reference Museum in there and was deeply moved by the simple and solemn writings of these nameless young men., After that, he traveled to Kumamoto Prefecture, where he research and , places associated with the Shinpūren rebellion, with Seishi Araki's guidance,Seishi Araki Mr. Yukio Mishima's journey to research the Shinpūren. and purchased a Japanese sword worth 100,000 yen. He also met with the widow of the late Zenmei Hasuda, who was his boyhood mentor.
Mishima began to strongly desire to join the JSDF around the autumn just before he began writing Runaway Horses, and from around October he approached the Ministry of Defense about his desire to join the JSDF on a trial basis, but was turned down. So after that, he asked , a managing director of the Mainichi Newspapers Co., to act as an intermediary, and contacted , administrative vice-minister of the Ministry of Defense, and Iwaichi Fujiwara, a former Lieutenant General, and others, asking for their help.
On December 19, after hearing from about some young men preparing to launch a Minzoku-ha magazine, Fusao Hayashi introduced one of them, who was a disciple of Kiyoshi Hiraizumi and a graduate of Meiji Gakuin University, to Mishima's home. Also in the same month, donated a Japanese sword, , to Mishima as a return gift of appreciation for writing the preface to Funasaka's book, The Scream of the Heroic Spirits that published December 10.
1967 (Shōwa 42) On January 5, 1967, the Minzoku-ha monthly magazine was launched, and on 11 same month, editor-in-chief who was a disciple of Kiyoshi Hiraizumi and a graduate of Meiji Gakuin University, he along with deputy editor-in-chief Kiyoshi Bandai visited Mishima at home to ask for his contributions. Mishima decided to contribute to the magazine for free, and from then on, the two visited him once every three days.
Mishima told the two young men with a serious expression, "Ever since I wrote Voices of the Fallen Heroes, I feel as if the spirit of Asaichi Isobe has possessed me." Another day, he unsheathed his Japanese sword and said, "A Katana is not something merely to be admired. It is a living entity. With this living blade, I must expose the deception of the intellectuals in the ."
On January 27, , a Waseda University student and a member of the (abbreviated name, 日学同, Nichigakudō), also visited Mishima. He asked for contribute an article to the , which the Nichigakudō would launch the following month. Mochimaru was also a disciple of Kiyoshi Hiraizumi, along with Nakatsuji and Bandai, and was a staff member of the Controversy Journal.
Around this time that Mishima met these young people who shared their worrying about the future of Japan, he told , an editor in charge of Shinchosha, "I feel like it's scary. What I wrote in my novel has appeared as a fact. But on the other hand, sometimes facts come before fictions." collected in ,
Also, around this time, Mishima learned that people related to scholarship and the arts in China (including the people who had guided and entertained actors from the Bungakuza theatre troupe when they visited China) were being treated badly by Mao Zedong. collected in collected in Feeling a sense of mission that Japan, a geographically close neighbor, should take the lead in protesting, he expressed his support for efforts to restore the original autonomy of Chinese scholarship and the arts (including classical studies). He then held a press conference together with Yasunari Kawabata, Jun Ishikawa, and Kōbō Abe to issue a statement in protest against the "Cultural Revolution", an oppression carried out by Mao Zedong, the Chinese Communist government. However, most newspapers at the time gave their statements just brief mention, the only newspaper to report the full text of the statement was the Tokyo Shimbun.
In March, Mishima was granted permission to join the JGSDF on a trial basis, on the condition that he return home every one or two weeks, and he enlisted alone under his real name, ," for 46 days from April 12 to May 27. During the enlisting, Mishima was first assigned to the in Kurume-shi, Fukuoka Prefecture. After leaving the school on April 19, he went to the in Suntō-gun, Shizuoka Prefecture, where he experienced mountain trekking and camping at Lake Yamanaka, then joined the Fuji School Advanced Officer Course (AOC), where received instruction from Captain . collected in
Around mid-April or late that year, Mishima was told by Iwaichi Fujiwara, "Let me show you how young JSDF officers live," and was shown around the rented house of Fujiwara's son-in-law, , and a few days later, he dined with Tomizawa and about five of his Fuji school classmates. At the dinner, Mishima spoke of his plan for a coup d'état, which he proposed to take advantage of the JGSDF' deployment to take power when the police alone could no longer suppress left-wing student demonstrations, but Tomizawa replied, "We won't do anything illegal like that." At that moment, Mishima's face changed color, and an expression of hatred appeared on his face, as if he thought, "."
After May 11, Mishima joined the Ranger Course, and then transferred to the Narashino 1st Airborne Brigade in Funabashi-shi, Chiba Prefecture, where he experienced basic training (except parachute training). In an interview shortly after his first solo enlistment in the JSDF, Mishima answered the following about defense of Japan:
Mishima further talked in this interview, "I don't know whether it is the present system or His Majesty's wishes that dictate this, but when I heard that His Majesty would be standing aside to welcome foreign envoys at Haneda, avoiding the JSDF' honor guard, I felt an indescribable pathetic feeling."
The members of the Controversy Journal group and the Japan Students' League expressed to Mishima their desire to join the JGSDF for a trial period. Mishima made serious plans to set up a militia organization, and through Hiroshi Mochimaru, requested the cooperation of the Waseda University National Defense Club (formed in April). Thus, a three-way relationship between the Controversy Journal group, the Japan Students' League, and Mishima gradually took shape.
On June 19, Mishima met for the first time the representatives of the Waseda University National Defense Club, including Masakatsu Morita, a student at Waseda University's Faculty of Education and a member of the Japan Students' League, on meeting held at the coffee shop "Victoria" in Roppongi, Minato-ku, and decided on the date for the Waseda University National Defense Club's trial enlistment in the JGSDF.
For one week from July 2, 13 members of Waseda University's National Defense Club enlisted at the JGSDF in Eniwa-shi, Hokkaido for a trial period. Morita wrote about his impressions at the time, angrily saying, "Even so, can't something be done about the trend of JSDF personnel turning into salaried workers, who say they are doing this to get a license or to be advantageous when changing jobs?" He also wrote that it was unfortunate that JSDF personnel "don't want to talk much about the Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution" and that "there is no person who has made it clear that they want to stage a coup." Morita was a young man who had recited with deep affection Tokutomi Sohō's tanka poem, "I wonder who is my lover, it is the country of Japan, God created," which he had learned from a senior at university.
In August, Mishima solidified a concrete plan to train young people who would become the core of the National Defense Force, and met with of the JGSDF personnel on September 9 for implement regular trial enlistments in the JGSDF.Mishima's letter to Katsuo Kikuchi on August 25, 1967. collected in Mishima's letter to Katsuo Kikuchi on September 24, 1967. collected in On September 26, Mishima departed Haneda Airport on a Japan Airlines flight to India to do research for his novel The Temple of Dawn. He met up with a police bureaucrat , who had been stationed in Hong Kong and had known him since his youth, at Kai Tak Airport, and he told Sassa that he wanted to form a private national army to defend Japan against surrounding communist nations and asked for his cooperation. However, Sassa asked Mishima to cooperate in strengthening security measures as an opinion leader, and discouraged his idea of creating a private army.
That August, around the anniversary of the bombing, Mishima condemned the U.S. atomic strike on Hiroshima as history's worst "massacre", and stated that the only words that properly expressed the national indignation felt by the Japanese against the atomic bombing were the passage in Emperor Shōwa's Imperial Rescript on the Termination of the War, . collected in He also argued that, as a country that continues to be exposed to the nuclear threat of neighboring countries in the future, Japan alone, as a country that was atomic bombed, cannot be surviving without getting hands dirty (without possessing dirty nuclear weapons), and that of all the countries in the world, "the only one that can be produce nuclear weapons without any remorse of conscience is our Japan, the only country that has been atomic bombed. Shouldn't we cope with the new nuclear age with glorious privilege?"
On October 5, Mishima met with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, President Zakir Husain, and an army colonel in India, and expressed on Japanese newspaper, a sense of crisis about Japan's lack of national defense awareness against the threat of the Chinese Communist Party. collected in Mishima's letter to Katsuo Kikuchi on October 20, 1967. collected in In there, he likened Japan's lazy nature that currently slumbering, to the grasshopper in summer in the story of The Ant and the Grasshopper.